"I was just shocked. In terms of being scared, I wasn't scared. I was like, frozen in the moment," Evans Blanc said.

It was certainly the last thing he imagined could happen during a shopping trip with his mother and sister.

"I saw a cab with a man screaming, 'Get out of my car because you didn't pay,'" he said.

Blanc, 14, was sitting in his mother's black Nissan Pathfinder at the Northgate Shopping Center in Revere. The keys were in the ignition, and the next thing the Malden teen knew, two strangers were his car.

Police said the two men didn't want to pay the cab fare from Boston and carjacked the vehicle.

"They were also apologizing," Blanc said. "The guy in the driver seat was crying, 'Oh no. I don't want to go back to jail.'"

Blanc warned the two he had GSP tracking on his phone, and even called his mother for help, as they traveled some 6 miles at high speeds. Eventually, the men ditched the car in front of a Melrose funeral home on Main Street.

That prompted an intense manhunt in nearby neighborhoods. Five hours later, police called off the search.

The men were gone.

"I can't say enough about the little man," Police Chief Michael Lyle said. "I'd like to meet him someday. He did a tremendous job to figure out making a phone call."